Social Work Skills for Community Practice

Mary-Ellen Brown, MSW, MPA, LCSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and the Founder/Director of the Office of Community Health, Engagement, and Resiliency at Arizona State University. Dr. Brown is also the Founder/Director of the national Center for Community Health and Resilience, a training and research center for Community Health Workers through SAMHSA's National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She is the chair of the Policy, Administration, and Community Practice Concentration Committee at ASU, and has over a decade of experience teaching macro social work courses including introductory macro practice, advanced community practice, program planning and evaluation, grant writing, administration, and leadership. Dr. Brown has been a community organizer, program manager, evaluator and researcher for nearly 20 years. She has a robust background in community health, positive youth development, nonprofit administration, and equitable, holistic place-based community development. Dr. Brown uses participatory action research to engage, mobilize, and strengthen or activate resilience in partnership with communities. Her scholarship has earned her recognition through several awards, including Social Worker of the Year (NASW-AZ, Branch II), the ACOSA Emerging Scholar Award (Association for Community Organization and Social Action), the Watts College Community Solutions Research Team Award and the ASU President's Medal for Social Embeddedness. Katie Stalker, MSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the Director of Field Education at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. Dr. Stalker is passionate about macro social work practice and education. Her research focuses on youth violence prevention across the adolescent social ecology (i.e., juvenile justice, school, family settings) and implementation science for community-centered prevention. In her line of research focused on community-centered prevention, Dr. Stalker uses a Community-Based Participatory Research approach in which she examines social problems and co-develops solutions in local contexts through partnerships with communities. In her role as Director of Field Education, she continues her community-based work by collaborating with agencies and organizations in order to develop rich field placement opportunities that provide students with the opportunity to apply their classroom learning into social work settings.

Preface


Acknowledgments


Chapter 1. Introduction: The Application of Community Practice Skills in Macro Social Work


PART I. THE PRE-ENGAGEMENT PHASE


Chapter 2. Entering the Community and Using Interviewing Skills to Understand People, Issues, and Opportunities


Chapter 3. Recruiting Potential Participants


Chapter 4. Developing Relationships and Partnerships with Grassroots and Formal Organizations


PART II. THE ENGAGEMENT PHASE


Chapter 5. Using Dialogue, Traditional and Digital Storytelling, and Structural Group Work Techniques to Identify Community Issues


Chapter 6. Engaging Participants in the Discovery, Assessment, and Documentation of Community Strengths and Challenges


Chapter 7. Facilitating Leadership Development and Group Decision Making: Encouraging Public Participation in Planning and Engaging Constituents in the Development of Action Plans


Chapter 8. Taking Action: Group Processes for Implementing Action Campaigns and Change Strategies


PART III. THE POST-ENGAGEMENT PHASE


Chapter 9. Working with Community Groups to Critically Reflect and Engage in Dialogue on the Process and Outcomes of Action Plans


Chapter 10. Discovering Whether and Why the Action Worked: Using Participatory Research to Conduct Formal Evaluations


PART IV. ADDITIONAL APPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORK SKILLS FOR COMMUNITY PRACTICE


Chapter 11. Using Social Work Skills to Advocate for Legislation


Chapter 12. Social Work Skills for Community Building


Chapter 13. Leadership, Teamwork, and Supervision in Macro Social Work Practice


Chapter 14. Interpersonal Skills in a Global Context: Advocating for Human Rights


Index